Rebecca Gibney has paid a heartfelt tribute to her mother for her 91st birthday.
The actress shared the emotional post on Instagram this week, describing the values her mother Shirley had passed on to her over the years.
“It’s my utter faith that things will always get better, that this too shall pass, that grief and pain and loss are a part of life but so is joy and kindness and love,” she wrote.
Gibney said that outlook came from her mother, who endured years of domestic violence during her childhood.
“My father was an alcoholic. It scarred all of us,” she previously said in an interview with Andrew Denton.
“My mother shielded us a lot from it. I could remember her putting us to bed and I, quite often, would hear Dad come home but she’d always shut all the doors, so you’d hear the yelling and the shouting and the slapping but you’d never actually see it.
“When I was older, she said that, on the odd occasion, he beat her so badly she had bruises for six months.”
Despite those experiences, Gibney said her mother had taught her to focus on kindness and gratitude.
“And for someone who has dealt with the deepest kind of pain since she was child to a world of domestic violence – Mum has never wavered in her faith and her ability to put others first,” she wrote in the post.
Gibney said she was “so grateful” for being able to spend another year with her mum as she continued to share her “wisdom and kindness”.
The actress has spoken openly in the past about her childhood and the impact her mother had on her life.
“We have all had some tragedy and it’s up to you to deal with it and move on,” she told the Herald Sun in a 2013 interview.
“Mum’s attitude has helped a lot. She would constantly tell us it was not our fault and she shielded us so that when Dad came home he’d beat her up.
“I’d hear it but never see it. Sometimes she had to sleep in the car but she always took it.
“In those days there was no help or shelters. You couldn’t just leave. Besides, she saw that alcoholism was the disease.
“When he was sober he was a kind, gentle person. Since knowing more about his own childhood, I understood and I also understood why, in my teens and 20s I gravitated to strong father figures because I grew up without a strong father figure.”
Gibney previously about her father’s battle with alcoholism in a 2015 interview with TV Week while promoting her role in Not The Boy Next Door.
“Alcoholism is a disease and I think that is why it is portrayed so well in the mini-series because you recognise that he wasn’t a bad man, it is just alcohol that did that to him and he was a tormented soul,” she said.
Images: Instagram
